Rachelle Bharathi Chandran
I wrote a story last month about the way we as a society have relegated an entire group of people to do cleaning work and argued for the need for systemic change, not merely ‘fair pay’ as per savarna women’s imagination. What I didn’t discuss in it was the most important factor which contributes to such a system- education.
One of the things I discussed in the article was unemployment as the prime cause where people resort to taking up jobs as cleaning staff/domestic help work even if they are reasonably educated to land an entry-level office job.
The public education system in India has seen a steady decline post-independence. A key factor for the failure of public education in India is caste. Upper castes (across all religions) wanted to retain their economic and socio-cultural power and found equal education a threat to their dominance. As Babasaheb mentioned, education is one of the key ways a community can break out of the shackles of oppression emphasised in his clarion call ‘educate, agitate, organise’. But, it is not merely (any) education but quality and equal education for everyone that is key to upliftment.
The Indian/South Asian upper castes have been or perhaps always were clever to understand education as a liberatory force and therefore severely restricted education for the masses. In modern times, the same attitude has translated to “wanting the best for their child” masked as parental concern and duty.
If the advancement of one’s self and one’s children comes at the expense of the advancement of another human being or community- it is undoubtedly a selfish, vile, unforgivable act of criminality and the highest evil.
I would argue that the most harmful policy in India is the schooling system mirroring the varna system. At the top are the IB schools with (allegedly) the most liberal, progressive curriculum with the best teachers because they are well paid, unlike most other school teachers. These schools market themselves through their extra-curricular activities, a non-conventional approach to teaching, studying with ‘white’ people (Indian idea of diversity) and easier access to foreign education after school. It is followed by the ICSE with its emphasis on English education and CBSE exclusively for the central govt. bureaucrats. Even, the govt. employees are not spared from this discrimination. The KVs of India also have a heavy recommendation-seat culture with many non-bureaucrat children studying through recommendation. The children who can’t afford the financial or cultural capital are the ones in state board schools. And, the worst of the lot is the state board with the non-English medium of instruction.
All the central examinations such as NEET, JEE, and GATE including private entrance exams are based on the CBSE board syllabi. For example, when the exams mention the 10th level of mathematics as the standard for taking the exams, they mean the CBSE level of the 10th board. State board students, thus, are at an enormous disadvantage because many schools don’t have the same level of advanced math or English as their CBSE/ICSE counterparts. The result has been that most of the people who qualify for these exams and attend the premier institutions tend to be students from the same school board. The few students outside this school board who manage to crack through this system face enormous challenges in keeping up with their peers, often, racing to learn everything their CBSE/ICSE board students have already mastered without the guidance and time their peers had. Moreover, they also have to keep up with the learning in their course of study, thus, trying to accomplish two heavy educational demands which is tiring, time-consuming and exhausting. And, unsupportive teachers and professors often relegate such students as having behavioural problems or worse, consider them lazy for not ‘scoring’ for a scale they have designed.
There is no need to mention the caste-class breakup of the students in CBSE/ICSE and State board schools. I hope that’s obvious. It’s also important to mention UC students from state board-non-English medium of instruction attending premier institutions become the mascot of overcoming all struggles-the shining light of savarna merit. They are often compared with the Dalits who came from similar educational circumstances where the Dalit student is often asked why they can’t similarly overcome their circumstances or is accused of playing the victim card. Or, such savarna students are compared with the rich and elite Dalits students who received English medium instruction as a justification for EWS reservations.
One important factor, India has failed to consider is that learning is multi-factor oriented outcome. The poor Brahmin-upper caste student may have had a supportive family environment, and access to other resources both psychological and physical apart from environmental. This is often not the case with Dalit families or Dalit students who have to navigate caste aggression and violence in their everyday lives regardless of where they live (cities or villages). Dalit children also have to deal with growing up in families where parents and relatives have experienced horrifying caste trauma and generational violence with no access to psychological support. Learning outcomes are affected by violence and trauma and the story of overcoming all odds to study is a fairy tale and an excuse to not implement basic social needs and rights (access to equal and quality medical care, housing, education).
A nourishing environment is necessary for learning which is not possible in a casteist society.
In such an unequal system, why do we not recognise people (even marginalised people) being in premier institutions is a function of privilege more than ‘hard work? The idea of hard work in academia is as much a lie like the hard-working billionaire.
A large part of decolonising or desavarnaising or debrahminisation is to stop upholding institutions built and sustained by oppressive systems like the Ivy League, Oxford, IIT, IIM, TISS, and JNU. It’s even more harmful to perpetuate this within marginalised communities because it pits them against each other. The only thing separating a state college student and an Ivy league or IIT student is opportunity or (contact/network) than ‘hard work’.
It’s also ridiculous to see students from the same institutes on panels, discussions, penning articles and shaping discourse because they are all parroting the same language. For example, how is it more legitimate for a student in the U.S. merely due to association with an Ivy League institution to have more authority to speak on Rajasthan regional politics and culture than a student who has lived all their lives and continues to live in Rajasthan? Such an academic discourse is a remnant of colonial anthropological practice. We have successfully made the white people guilty of exoticising the orient while shaping ourselves as replacements for white people to study India from exotic locations.
I’m not advocating for a ban on studying in these institutions or claiming they have no academic rigour. It is important to recognise the need to make public educational institutions of better quality in India. We must also recognise that even within India, we need to emphasise state educational institutions instead of the central institutions. We must include, participate, and learn from research scholars, professors, and teachers from state institutions as much as we do with the other central/foreign institutions affiliated with people.
There is nothing wrong to include IIT/IIM/JNU/TISS/Harvard in your CVs if it is merely a marker of where one studied and not a harbinger of prestige and status. If we can see Dr B. R. Ambedkar University, Srikakulam or Rayalaseema University or Majuli University of Culture or any other state-level institutions in the same vein as the universities above- we all can add it to our social media as bios. Until then, let’s stop perpetuating the sham of academic excellence merely through a name or assume excellence due to foreign association.
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Rachelle Bharathi Chandran is a writer whose writing centers on the Dalit experience and the various marginalized intersections within it. Zer professional work includes writing on health and education as a content marketing specialist.
